Tag Archives: Charity

Holiday break is always a great time filled with family, food, fun, and presents! During your holiday break, don’t forget to take some time to give back to the community! Whether you donate to a food drive, donate clothes, or help out a local soup kitchen, you can spread the holiday cheer and remember what the holidays are truly about.

1. Coat Drive

Take a look into your closet and see which coats you no longer wear. If you are feeling like you can part with it, donate it to a local charity drive! There are a ton of coat charity drives that reward people for their generous donations. For instance, some restaurants and coffee shops give donors a free dessert, appetizer, or coffee for every X amount of jackets they bring. Some places even give gift cards in exchange for some coats. So, clean out that closet, donate your coat to someone in need, and maybe even get rewarded! Check your local businesses for coat charity drives.

2, Toys For Tots

If you have extra cash to spare, then donate some new toys to Toys for Tots! This wonderful organization gives toys to kids who are less fortunate. Their parents request toys for their holiday gifts and donated toys will fulfill the child’s wishlist. If you don’t have any extra cash to purchase gifts, you can also host your own Toys For Tots event to donate to the charity.

3. Volunteer

Looking to give back, but have no way of donating items? No problem! You can volunteer at local shelters, church parishes, and soup kitchens. You can volunteer to help serve food to those in need or simply help set-up. No task is too small and they are always welcoming new volunteers. Find places to volunteer: http://www.homelessshelterdirectory.org/

When I first heard of Dance Marathon coming to my college campus, I was hesitant to get involved. I have never really been the best dancer and dancing always feels uncomfortable to me. I figured I would still give it a shot so that I could at least represent my fraternity at a Greek hosted event.

I want to tell you that Dance Marathon is one of the best philanthropies you could ever participate in.

The purpose is to raise money for local children’s hospitals. Many of the families who rely on the children’s hospitals have huge bills sometimes the equivalent of paying for 4 years of college. By raising this money, you can help pay for the services the “miracle kids” need. Miracle kids are children with injuries, diseases, or disabilities who will often make appearances at the events with their families. The twitter handle/slogan for the philanthropy is #FTK which stands for For the Kids.

Yes, sometimes dancing can be awkward and uncomfortable. But when it is for such a worthy cause and everyone is participating it can be a lot of fun and the reward of helping these kids out is worth your time. It is $10 to register, and you can even donate more on top of that if you want to. The marathons can vary in time. Some go for 28 hours while the one at my school went for 6. We raised about $10,000 for the kids and some will even raise millions.

Make a team and get involved with your school’s upcoming dance marathon or you could even organize the event yourself. They give you all the steps to get involved on their website at: http://dancemarathon.com/GetStarted. You can also learn more about the cause and some of the kids featured on the website.